In Absentia
by A Quarter Past
Summary: Names. Names. Names. Less than a year ago, Kathryn would have remained blind to them – something that fleet psychologists assured her was natural for someone in her rare predicament, Nameless among a species with words printed onto their skin at birth – but now they were sometimes all she saw.


An AU. Some of the adventures are the same, and some aren't. Hints are dropped. Just a different take on the Soul Mark meme that went around a long time ago. There are time jumps from past to present. Typically these jumps have some linearity to them (in each part, I don't jump around the two timelines willy-nilly). People will be a bit different. This is in four parts. It will be updated the third weekend of every month because apparently I need to schedule these things in order to get. them. done.

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**In Absentia**

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Part One: _ Father_

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i

When she was ten years old, Kathryn's father allowed her to accompany him on a diplomatic mission to Betazed. Her sister's envy had been palpable in the weeks preceding their departure date, and her behavior delved into the viciousness that only children can get away with. Extra chili-oil made it into her lunches and dinners, sand found its way into her sheets, and once Kathryn had even spotted ants in her favorite jar of marmalade.

Their parents, although aware of the youngest sister's cruel outbursts, gave young Phoebe leeway to vent her feelings. Only once did Kathryn allow her own anger to get the best of her, and she pinched her younger sister very hard behind the knee. But Guilt made her apologize only an hour later. Phoebe cried for reasons they didn't yet understand, and the next morning Kathryn kissed her mother goodbye before boarding the shuttle with her father.

This, her father told her as their shuttle neared the Federation's flagship, is your future.

His voice had been so sure, so proud, that Kathryn decided that he was right. Their family home, her mother's art, and her father's position as a civilian mediator would all one day be her past. The stars, the voyage, the vastness of space — they were all her future.

And then he looked at her for a very long moment, his blue eyes sadder than she had ever seen.

It wasn't until she was introduced to her new tutors at the Star Fleet academy prep school on Betazoid that Kathryn understood her father's grief and her sister's anger. For the next three weeks, she cried herself to sleep at night, thinking of the beautiful, feminine name wrapped around her sister's ankle, and her parents' names etched across one another's wrists. And of her own skin, unblemished, unmarked and unnamed.

She knew then that wherever her future took her, her family would not follow.

ii

The large market-town Kathryn found herself in was as charming as it was lively. In the hour she had already spent walking along its canopy-lined streets, the geography of it had eluded her. Small alleyways that grew narrower in direct center before widening into larger walkways and finally into streets were intersected by other streets that narrowed into alleys and were intersected by low-hanging bridges that contained even more foot traffic and canopies. Already, on her quest to find something to liven up her spartan quarters, she had lost not only Neelix (a surprisingly astute guide when he was silent long enough to keep track of where he was wandering off too) but also Chakotay (whose disappearance was less likely an accident and more likely a calculated effort to find better company).

"That is all right," Kathryn said out loud to herself; she happened to remember the name of the acting ensign on transporter duty today. A Maquis, young but brooding over a life miserable enough to want to return to (or perhaps just a name compelling enough to fight an insurgency for). An acting ensign that, should she fail to orient herself to this alien city within the next toll of a massive clock she still couldn't see, Kathryn could comm for assistance.

Perhaps he wouldn't transport her into space, but then again perhaps he would. Since the news of her successful efforts to thwart Torres, Seska, and Carey's plans to break both the Prime Directive and the Shikarian Cannon of Laws, the mood of the crew had not been in her favor.

Whatever damage had been done to the crew's morale, her quick and decisive actions against the conspirators had earned everyone another day of leave on Shikaris. And since their short time in the Delta Quadrant had already provided compelling evidence that their 70,000 light-year journey would be full of more hardship than wonder, it was a day she fully intended to take advantage of.

If she could find her way around the place, of course.

Lost as she may be, that didn't prevent her from drifting between one stand to the next, marveling at the craftsmanship of both textile workers and jewelers. A particularly congenial marketeer offered her water and a small pear-shaped fruit, before pointing her off toward a set of stairs that led to one of those low-hanging bridges, but not before rattling off a long string of words her universal translator could not keep up with.

No stranger to the strange, Kathryn followed his pointed directions and pressed herself between the ever-moving stream of well-dressed bodies until she reached the stairs in question. Narrow, steeper than they ought to be, and stone, it quickly became apparent why she had been given a glass of water.

Three-hundred and thirty-eight stairs later, and embarrassingly winded, Kathryn found herself standing atop a bridge that looked as though it were low-hanging but in reality was very much not, and just fifteen or so meters away stood the Maquis captain. He was leaning against the bridge railing and dropping small kernels of the Shikaris equivalent of half-popped kettle-corn off the edge. He looked as disconcerted as she personally felt.

"Captain," she greeted. This was strategic for two reasons. First, while they seemed to have reached a detente regarding the merging of their crews and the basic flight-plan of Voyager, the two remained far removed from friends. He coordinated the Maquis crew shifts, while Kathryn and Tuvok coordinated theirs. Their separate but functional command styles had created some peace aboard Voyager. Polite is what they were. Polite and distant and wary. Second, she'd hate to test whether or not a shocked fall over the edge would be short or long for him.

"Commander," he greeted in kind. A loose sort of smile found its way into his expression at the sight of her, clearly winded.

Another kernel was flicked over the edge.

Kathryn liked that Chakotay's use of her rank wasn't layered with another meaning. The one that Torres used, even before Kathryn overlooked her for the position of Chief Engineer, and the one that she sometimes suspected her Vulcan XO used. Tuvok, a friend, but a Vulcan friend; he would have his reservations about her command for many thousands of light years yet. It was doubt or condemnation or disrespect or all three combined into a complex emotional response to the situation. For Torres and those like her, the rank Commander was used to remind Kathryn that she didn't have the authority to strand them all here, that Voyager's true captain had died because of the Caretaker's array She, a Nameless human who – despite the phenomenon of being Named resting solely with humans meant that she was less of something, or just unable to comprehend that her orders had deep and lasting repercussions for all of those who served under her. For those like Tuvok, it was a reminder that humans were flawed, that despite Starfleet regulations allowing the Nameless to rise all the way to the rank of admiral, perhaps the innate flawed-ness of her species should have been impetus enough for her to hand off the role of acting captain to another. To him.

Kathryn had dealt with both reasons and the causes of them all of her life, from childhood to adulthood, and had thus learned to appreciate those who withheld judgment for something as small has having unblemished skin. Even if that meant appreciating a man who was a wanted terrorist. A man she gave safe passage on his ship, provided he behaved.

"Is it me, or is there something odd about this market?" She asked, coming to stand beside him and casting her gaze out to appreciate that the strange streets full of strange people continued to sprawl out until her line of sight was cut off by a wall of residential buildings.

Her companion chuckled, "I turned left expecting an alley and ended up halfway across the planet."

At this, Kathryn managed a laugh, "So you didn't just run off?"

"Oh no, I did. I just didn't intend to visit a beach-side resort in the process."

That explained why she had climbed several stories to reach a bridge only five meters off the ground. The Shikarians were using their spatial trajector technology to fold and perhaps even expand the space on their own planet. A dangerous enterprise, certainly, but clearly marvelously fiendish in its execution. "They certainly know their parlor tricks," was all she said in return.

"I know I'll remember this," Chakotay conceded, dropping the rest of his kettle- corn-equivalent to the streets below for the birds to eat.

"In fact, maybe it will be all I remember of the Shikarians and their technology," he added.

Kathryn took it for what it was; Maquis he may be, but even he knew when accepting the laws of another culture – despite the steep sacrifices that accompanied doing so– was better than not.

Perhaps he would be a good first officer after all.

"Oh, I don't know," she responded slowly, purposefully drawing out the words so that he would stop tossing food over the side of the bridge and pay attention to her.

Chakotay took the bait, "They haven't asked that we punish the three further, have they?"

"Nothing like that. In fact, it's good news. The magistrates agreed to provide us information they've been able to collect on the systems between Shikaris and the lands bordering the limits of their trajectors. We won't be traveling as blind as we thought."

iii

When she turned sixteen, Kathryn passed her Star Fleet entrance exams and left Betazed for Earth. Her sponsor sent her off with a gregarious hug and plenty of kisses to her cheeks, and made her promise to correspond frequently. I absolutely must know where your life takes you, darling Kathryn. It will be wonderful.

She looked into the lovely dark eyes of the women who had played mother and patron for the last six years and vowed to keep her promise.

Training to become officers was open to all humans, but within the first year of her time at the Academy, it became clear that a glass ceiling existed for those who were Named. Faculty favored their non-human cadets at a ratio of at least 25:1, and clucked with approval when they discovered that Kathryn herself had no blemishes indicating that she was marked for another. This statistic rendered her a pariah among the other human cadets and a curiosity among those of foreign lineage.

She wrote only one letter to her family while at the academy, addressed to Phoebe, and received no reply.

When the Federation went to war with the Cardassians, she was made an ensign. Several years later, when she survived enemy captivity, she discovered that there was no ceiling to her progress when she made lieutenant, junior grade.

She wrote home once again, when she re-entered Federation space, and asked if Phoebe had found her Named.

Her father must have intercepted the communique, for the message Kathryn received in turn was filled with words of pride for her successes, an attached file of a family who had been reported missing for a handful of years — their beautiful blonde-haired daughter smiling brightly at the camera —, and a soft reproach for Kathryn's prying into business that was not her own.

iv

Names. Names. Names. Less than a year ago, Kathryn would have remained blind to them – something that fleet psychologists assured her was natural for someone in her rare predicament, nameless among a species with words printed onto their skin at birth – but now they were sometimes all she saw. Her crew, largely human now, had them written all over their bodies and in their files.

Name after name after name.

And not a single one of them had been flung across the galaxy with their match.

There were no fleet psychologists to explain to her why she noticed the 'Elizabeth Webber' scrawled on the palm of Ensign Kim, forever limiting his upward mobility because the Federation believed his loyalties rested with one above all the rest (there would never be an official promotion to lieutenant), or the hints of a name cleverly disguised by her first officer's facial tattoo, or the alien name scribbled on the base of Samantha Wildman's neck that kept catching Kathryn's attention whenever the woman had a shift on the bridge. No fleet psychologists to explain to her why all of those names made her feel hollow. All of these people, these humans, were filling roles aboard Voyager that they would have never been allowed to if half the crew hadn't been lost when the Caretaker snatched them from the Alpha Quadrant.

She had simply grown used to working with Vulcans and Betazoids and Bolians and those half-humans who were nameless simply because the names on their human parents' skin had corresponded with a willing and able non-human. Those half-humans who were looked upon as lesser by humans but given an elevated status by the Federation for the same reason. Now, she was outnumbered by her own kind – an odd predicament she had never truly given thought to before now.

There were other humans like her – Thomas Paris, who came from a long line of Nameless males – and the twins who worked in astrocartrography. But Tom had proven himself far more likable to those around him, and the sisters kept themselves company. In the short months of their travel, Kathryn had found her off-duty interactions limited to Tuvok ,the somewhat aggravating Neelix, the delightfully optimistic Kes, and their holographic doctor (who was Nameless himself in more ways than one).

When Seska's Cardassian lineage was uncovered, Kathryn checked Chakotay's file and sighed with heartfelt relief when the name written inside was human. Whatever that tattoo was covering, it wasn't his betrayal.

v

Despite her sense of alertness, Kathryn was forced to wear the plain sickbay gown as the Doctor tutted around her, occasionally keeping readings and generally keeping an eye on her. Chakotay had long since been released from the shrewd inspection of the hologram, but her reaction to whatever cure the Vidiians had concocted for her had bought her a few more days under observation.

If she hadn't just spent so much time off duty, this might have perturbed her, but the slow reintroduction to the ship and the dynamics of the crew suited her just fine.

But the EMH was cagey, reluctant to speak, despite their growing camaraderie as the odd-ones-out. When he wasn't looking, Kathryn wondered if he still blamed himself for not finding the cure on his own.

"How are you feeling, Doctor?"

Although it was Kathryn who had spent the better part of two months on a moon with an accommodating yet distant Chakotay, it was the holographic doctor's face that was simultaneously drawn in exhaustion and pinched in pain. He looked like the entire sickbay smelt like a Klingon hot bath.

"I'm functioning well within my parameters," he rebuffed, punching commands into his console as she dared to defy his earlier orders and stand and approach him.

His response to this defiance was to scan her, and cluck like a mother hen.

"Doctor," she warned, struggling not to roll her eyes at his petulance, "Kes has spent all of this time convincing me you have feelings; I don't know why you keep insisting on trying to convincing me otherwise."

"Very well," he said curtly — a sign of his discomfort if there ever was one — before setting down the medical tricorder, "in your absence the crew once again treated me as an auxiliary system and not a person."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, we'll have to redouble our efforts —"

He cut her off with a cough before she could continue, his voice softer as he began to speak, "I am used to the treatment, Captain."

The use of her actual field-title did not go unnoticed nor unappreciated.

"What is it?" she pressed.

"There were questions," he confided, "that they didn't think to not ask in front of me. Regarding your command. Mr. Tuvok has quelled them for now, but they nearly didn't turn back to retrieve you. If it hadn't been for Chakotay on that planet with you, or Mr. Tuvok and Mr. Kim arguing that you could not be left behind, then…"

"…They would have left me," she concluded. It wasn't a foreign concept to her, being surgically excised from a group. But if they were to survive the next tens of thousands of light years, she'd have to figure this out.

"I'm afraid so, Captain."

Something tightened in her chest, and Kathryn was quite thankful that he had stopped scanning her. "Well, here I am regardless. The rest can be sorted out with time."

"You need allies," he said curtly, "and friends. Tuvok has warmed to your command, perhaps you should wear down Chakotay next."

She couldn't help it; she laughed, "I just spent two months alone with him. I'm ready to talk to other people. Torres, perhaps, if she can ever forgive me for overlooking her. Paris, if he were still on the ship."

The EMH leaned in, "I may be green with interpersonal communication, but I think you need to win over the Named. Somehow, some way, make them feel like you're on their side."

She was, but it was clear that they didn't think so.

vi.

When Tom Paris saved them from the surface of the primitive planet, and delivered the news that Seska had died, Kathryn stared stoically ahead and told the Maquis captain to take his time in mourning the woman who'd done him (them all) so much harm. It was over Suder's body in the morgue, as she listened to Tuvok explain that he might have found peace in his last moments, that she came to a conclusion there was no coming back from.

She looked her stalwart and patient first officer in his dark eyes and demoted him. To her surprise, he did not ask her for the logic of it, but instead nodded thoughtfully, and said,

"Perhaps a few promotions are also in order. I can list junior officers who have exemplary service records."

In that moment, she realized one of her oldest friends might have always supported her, might have waited for the moment when she deliberately broke one of the foundational rules of Starfleet, and rather than argue against it, found her plan to be the best path forward. As they stood over the body of the man who had nearly driven her former first officer insane with psychosis before sacrificing his own life to give Voyager back to them, Kathryn understood that Tuvok would support her in this and many more decisions to come. Perhaps this strange Betazoid had changed this stalwart Vulcan. Perhaps there had been nothing to change.

"We'll start slowly," she said in return, "with only a few. They deserve it."

"I concur."

Five hours later, from her ready room where three curious men stood, Kathryn silently pinned the extra pips to the collars of Harry Kim and Joe Carey, before opening a ship-wide comm and announcing their field promotions to Lieutenants Jr. Grade, before clearing her throat and granting Chakotay the position of her XO as well as a supplemental field rank of Commander.

There were no cheers throughout the ship, no fundamental shifts in the fabric of reality, but there were expressions of awe from those who stood before her. From this day forward, the Maquis were her crew too, and Starfleet were Chakotay's.

And the other message would not be lost.

They were first Named humans in nearly a century to stand where they were, with the ranks they now held.

That it was in the Delta Quadrant didn't seem to matter, if only for the moment.

When she closed the comm line, Kathryn genuinely smiled for the first time in months, "I can think of no better group of officers."

vii.

That her father was on Voyager was far stranger to Kathryn than his insistence that she accept her death. Despite the strangeness, she soaked in the near perfection of the memory of him: his cobalt gray hair and his strong jaw. Before her, asking her to embrace the beyond and enjoy it with those who'd gone before her, was the man who abandoned her on Betazoid, the man who had had the audacity to hug her small ten year old frame and tell her it was all for her own good.

He'd died more than a decade after that.

She hadn't seen him in the in-between.

He'd never visited her.

He'd never really told her goodbye.

"You're basing your appearance of him on my memory. How I saw him when I was ten. When he passed, his hair would have been white. The lines on his face deeper. He would have been foreign to me."

"I'm coming to you like this for your own comfort, Goldenbird."

"Don't," Kathryn snapped, so so amused that she was having an argument with her dead father in the presence of her crew and that they couldn't even see her because she was dead, but at the same time she was so angry. Brimming with the raw emotion of someone who'd cut loose by the person she cared about the most, and who now faced a specter of them meant to manipulate her,"You don't get to call me that. You forfeited that right when I was a child."

The man before her scowled, "Katie…"

"You can't be him," her breath was becoming more labored as she began to realize that danger she might truly be in. As she recalled all the near fever-dream sequences of deaths she'd been subjected to. The Doctor never would have poisoned her for her own good. Chakotay would have never cradled her broken body in grief. Impossible. The hologram would have fought to the end to save her, would have exhausted every effort, would have stared down at her in failure as she died. And Chakotay…They'd become more friendly in the last several months, but certainly not that close.

"You've chosen his form because you think it'd bring me comfort, because you think I'd trust him. But I don't. You picked the one person in my life who would prove to me that you aren't them! Get out of my head! My father is dead and he of all people would have understood that I could never trust him again."

The specter smiled cruelly, and Kathryn woke abruptly on the hard ground of the stormy planet that had started it all. Chakotay knelt beside her, his face wearing the relief of someone who did not take any death lightly, and briefly touched her shoulder, "You're okay."

To his comm, he reiterated, "The captain's awake now, Doctor. Her life signs are stable."

The static cut and sizzled, and in a moment of clarity along the line, she heard the EMH say, "I expect to see her in sickbay the moment you make it back."

When the comm line died, Kathryn sat, aware her new XO was discreetly helping her maintain her balance as her consciousness returned.

In a rare moment of vulnerability, she found herself saying, "I think it was an electrical life form, feeding off of my neural pathways."

"We nearly lost you," he confirmed.

"I nearly went with him willingly. I might have, in another world, had things been different."

"Who?" Chakotay asked gently, sensing the weakness in her stoney facade. Perhaps even a little wary of looking beneath it.

"My father. When I was a child, I would have followed him to the end of the universe, just to make him happy."

"And now?"

Perhaps thoughtlessly, Kathryn stood. Her legs shook, but her voice did not, "He's dead, and I'm in the Delta Quadrant, running away from his memory."

Had she been paying attention to the man beside her, Kathryn might have recognized the look of kinship softening his features.

But she wasn't. She was reluctantly looking to her past.

viii.

Her father died before she made commander, and through the efforts of a network of individuals who respected his work, she made it to Indiana in time for the wake.

Older now and well traveled, she saw the farm she had once called home for what it was in the grand scheme of all she'd seen: small. Its finite fields were bordered by trees, and the house isolated. The season's characteristic snow covered everything in sight, and a long trail of footprints had created a pathway of slush between the front gates in the door. She walked it twice before stopping on the porch and peering in the window. She could just make out the slender figure of her mother surrounded by family and friends, many of whom she had not seen in more than two decades, and wondered whose decision it had been to send her away when she was only ten.

She thought of the deep lines on her mother's face in the recorded message, the one she had received just two days ago asking her to come home for the service, and thought for the first time in quite a long time, that it was through no choice of her own, that her family couldn't follow her into her future.

It had been theirs.

The door was unlocked, and she chose not to let herself in.

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Next: Sister


End file.
